Muhammad Hassan Recalls Working With Vince McMahon, Undertaker Segment Airing After London Bombings

Muhammad Hassan recently looked back on his relationship with Vince McMahon and the infamous Undertaker segment that aired the same day as the London bombings. The segment aired on the July 7, 2005 episode of Smackdown the same day as the bombings and was filmed three days before, in which Hassan prayed on the ramp and five masked men came out to choke Undertaker with piano wire before carrying away Shawn Daivari. The segment garnered massive controversy from national outlets and led to Hassan being written off TV after a loss to Taker at Great American Bash that month.

Hassan spoke on Maven’s YouTube account about the angle and his personal experiences with McMahon, and you can see highlights below (courtesy of Fightful):

On filming the segment and WWE’s decision to air it: “So this was filmed on a Tuesday. The London bombing happened I believe on a Thursday morning, SmackDown was set to go on air Thursday evening. They made the decision to air it in its entirety with this match with Shawn acting like the Muslim martyr being carried out of the ring with a [text] at the bottom in England talking about, you know, this may be sensitive to some viewers. When this happened on SmackDown, it reached, it was in the local newspaper in Syracuse and no one even knew that I was from Syracuse. It was in Time Magazine, it was everywhere.”

On the backlash: “This was seven minutes of a segment and to take it off of TV would’ve left like a huge — in the United States, I mean okay, it’s different than what happened in England but after this, after this it was over. We had media outrage about the fact that we even aired it. I was supposed to beat The Undertaker and then I was supposed to wrestle Dave Bautista in DC where he is billed from and it was a big fuck you to America that the Arab defeats the hometown boy in the nation’s capital.”

On his relationship with McMahon: “Vince was always great to me. For everything that has happened afterwards, I can’t speak of, but for when I was there at the time working with Vince, he was always good to me. That character was kind of like his baby. I remember flying on his personal jet going to Buffalo, which was so cool, flying on his personal jet to a press conference with JBL. I never had a problem with him, he was always very open and accessible to me.”